Because Adam sinned, we are born with a sinful nature, we are guilty before God, all our thinking and doing is tainted by sin, we are already under the sentence of death, and we unable to do anything whatsoever to save ourselves. Sin and death is the consequence of Adam’s fall. If we don’t grasp this harsh reality, we cannot possibly appreciate the good news of the gospel, and the grace and mercy bestowed upon us by the second Adam, the Lord Jesus.

Most Americans operate on the sincere but misguided assumption that deep down inside people are basically good. When we compare ourselves to others, we might be able to measure up pretty well. Sure, there are some who we might begrudgingly admit are better people than we are, but still, we usually do pretty well in most of our self-comparison tests made against others.
The problem with assuming that people are basically good is that it completely ignores the fact that ours is a fallen race, under the just condemnation from God, awaiting the well-deserved sentence of death and eternal punishment. The reality is that on judgment day God is not going to compare me to someone else, who is a fallen sinner like I am. Instead, God will measure me against the standard of his law (specifically, the Ten Commandments), which is holy, righteous, and good (Romans 7:12). And when God measures me using the standard of his law, it will become all too clear that like everyone else descended from Adam, I cannot meet God’s standard of absolute and complete obedience to his commandments. I am a sinner. I am guilty before God. I am under the sentence of death.
For most folks, this dilemma immediately raises the question of fairness. Is it fair for God to judge me against a standard I cannot possibly meet? The answer would be “no,” if we were to look at this question in a vacuum without any biblical context. The Bible teaches that Adam was not only the first human (from whom all humans are biologically descended), but that Adam was created holy, without sin, and with the ability to obey God’s commands. Adam was placed in Eden for a time of probation under the covenant of works with its condition, “do this (not eat from the forbidden tree) and live,” or “eat from the tree and die.” Adam chose the latter, bringing down the covenant curse of death upon the entire human race. Many people agree with Ben Franklin’s famous adage that the only two things in life which are inevitable are death and taxes, both of which I might add, stem from human sin. Yet, the fact remains, death is not natural to the human race. Death is the consequence of the fall of Adam.
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 Désubas is remembered on February 3 by the Lutheran Church. He has been the subject of several ballades, and his name is imprinted on a plaque standing in the Plain of Montpellier in remembrance of the Huguenot pastors who have lost their lives for their faith.

Huguenots in 18th-century France were well-aware of the dangers they faced by attending Protestant services. Many had been Protestants since birth, children or grandchildren of a generation that had enjoyed some freedoms allowed by the 1598 Edict of Nantes.
But things had changed, In 1685, King Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes and launched a fierce campaign against Protestants. In spite of restricting their worship to private homes or hidden outside spaces, many Huguenot congregations were discovered and punished, with their pastors imprisoned or exiled. Those who insisted on preaching were executed. About 700 churches were destroyed, and Protestants who refused to convert to Roman Catholicism were imprisoned.
While initially some Huguenots (known as Camisards) fought back, most of them realized that violence was not the answer. In 1715, taking advantage of the death of Louis XIV, a group of French pastors met at the Synod of Montèzes, deliberating to free the church from acts of violence and claims of prophetic revelations, and to return to the orderly discipline exercised by Huguenot churches before 1685. Pastors were encouraged to study in Switzerland to be better prepared to care for their flocks.
Désubas, Pastor and Apologist
This is what Mathieu Majal, nicknamed Désubas (“from Ubas”), did when he became aware of God’s calling. Born on 28 February 1720, he grew up in his native Ubas, near Vernoux-en-Vivarais (by the Ardeche mountains in southern France). His calling as a preacher was confirmed at the synod of 30 April 1738, where he received a recommendation to study at the seminary in Lausanne, Switzerland.
His seminary education lasted three years, from 1740 to 1743, when he was ordained as a pastor. He then returned to France where he served as pastor and itinerant preacher in his native region of Vivarais, often traveling further south to Languedoc. On some occasions, as many as 5000 people gathered to hear him preach.
With other pastors, he also labored to fight rumors and calumnies about the Huguenots. In a letter written in 1744, he chided the parish priest of Le Gua, in southwest France, for attributing to the Huguenots a seditious document that had been circulating around the region.
“Put yourself for a moment in other people’s shoes. Suppose there was a paper full of heresies and impiety, contrary to your true beliefs, entitled, ‘Letter of the priests of Vivarais,’ and that you all were on its account prosecuted as heretics. How would you defend yourself? Wouldn’t you quite obviously ask for evidences and witnesses, and wouldn’t you consider it injust for someone to condemn you on the basis on simple prejudices, without listening to your explanations?”
If the priest’s prejudices were based on the accounts of the Camisards’ wars, Désubas said, he should remember the present pastors had done everything in their power to combat such fanaticism. “Any suspicion that we are rebels simply because a small number of seers, whom we have always condemned, to the point of depriving them of the Lord’s Supper, have in the past caused some tumult, is baseless.”
“If the religion we profess authorizes rebellion and revolt, you would have some reason to be suspicious and to attribute to us writings and actions leading to sedition. But have we ever believed or taught anything like it? Don’t we profess to believe that we must obey those who rule over us and submit to them in anything that does not violate the conscience? In the time when our ministries have been serving in Vivarais, have you ever seen uprisings and rebellions? Haven’t we suffered every mistreatment with great patience? … You may say that assembling against the edits of our ruler is a rebellion. But we ask you: do kings have a right to the conscience of their subjects?

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If righteousness could be obtained through the law, then Christ died for nothing (Gal. 2:21). Righteousness could never come through human obedience since God demands perfect obedience, and a curse impinges on all who fail to do everything God commands (Gal. 3:10). The curse is only removed through the death of Jesus who took the curse for us when He was hung on a tree (Gal. 3:13). Galatians, then, stands out as the first letter that declares that believers are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone.

1. Galatians Defends Paul’s Gospel as Being from Christ
Some readers may not know that Paul’s Apostolic legitimacy was attacked by opponents in Galatia. They claimed that Paul was not truly an Apostle. After all, he wasn’t a follower of Jesus during His earthly ministry. Furthermore, they asserted that Paul’s gospel contradicted the gospel taught in Jerusalem by Peter, John, and James. In other words, the agitators said that Paul’s gospel was dependent on the Jerusalem Apostles, but there’s more: they also accused Paul of distorting the gospel taught by the Apostles in Jerusalem.
In the first two chapters, therefore, Paul defends the legitimacy of his gospel. He emphasizes that the gospel he proclaimed was revealed to him supernaturally on the road to Damascus by Jesus Christ Himself. Paul’s gospel can’t be ascribed to his own thinking but was given to him independently by Jesus. But that’s not all—when Paul traveled to Jerusalem fourteen years later, the Apostles Peter, James, and John ratified Paul’s gospel. They acknowledged that Paul’s gospel was the true gospel, the same gospel that they preached. In fact, Paul even reproved Peter when the latter compromised the gospel in Antioch (Gal. 2:11–14). In the first two chapters of Galatians, then, Paul shows that he received his gospel directly from Jesus and that he did not distort the message taught by the Jerusalem Apostles. They all taught the same gospel.
2. Galatians Teaches That We Are Justified through Faith, Not by Works
Galatians is the first letter in which Paul trumpets the truth that believers are justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. His opponents insisted that one must keep the law and be circumcised to obtain salvation (Gal. 5:2–4; 6:12–13; see also Gen. 17:9–14; Acts 15:1–5). What these adversaries did not understand was that the new covenant had dawned with the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Believers were no longer under the stipulations of the Mosaic covenant, including circumcision.
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